I really like reading stories about trading and especially the quant end of things that isn't as present here. I would like to enter into one of these fields but I don't think I could long-term justify doing work that creates little to no social value[0] - even the most insular, ridiculous app startups at least sell products.
Is there good (i.e. interesting, not necessarily "crazy" and exciting like this) financial work out there that does something beyond make returns for shareholders? It seems like index funds would be one of the best places to work in terms of being at least tangentially related to working on something for real people, but I'm financially illiterate beyond high school economics so I could be way off base.
[0] Yes, I know market liquidity is necessary for companies to do business. I've also heard that trading firms are way populous past the minimum needed for efficient markets - please correct me if this is wrong.
I was toying with the idea of entering financial software, one company I was introduced to (Premise) was working on building crowdsourced economic data. They surely make their money by selling this data to hedge funds, etc, but I see the overall mission of having a much more accurate and detailed view of prices and inflationary trends as being a noble goal in the world of finance. Better measures of inflation and other economic activity can markedly affect monetary policy and in turn affect the well being of billions of people.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 23.7 ms ] threadIs there good (i.e. interesting, not necessarily "crazy" and exciting like this) financial work out there that does something beyond make returns for shareholders? It seems like index funds would be one of the best places to work in terms of being at least tangentially related to working on something for real people, but I'm financially illiterate beyond high school economics so I could be way off base.
[0] Yes, I know market liquidity is necessary for companies to do business. I've also heard that trading firms are way populous past the minimum needed for efficient markets - please correct me if this is wrong.